curated news excerpts & citations
Dean Obeidallah: Donald Trump is officially a PINO: a President in Name Only
… Trump has something else weighing him down that other second term Presidents didn’t have, namely extreme mental and physical decline. (Even Ronald Reagan didn’t show dementia signs 11 months into his second term like Trump.)
That is why Trump is increasingly becoming nothing more than a figurehead. Or more accurately, a PINO: a President in Name Only. And this very concerning for our nation because we don’t know who is actually making decisions!
(Dean Obeidallah more…)
Jennifer Rubin: Trump is Losing it
Mary Geddry: Trump’s unraveling jungle hallucination reveals a mind losing the boundaries between performance and reality.
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This type of conflation, the collapse of metaphor into memory, is not a quirk. It is a recognizable cognitive pattern, one often documented in frontotemporal dementia, where patients begin blending stories they’ve told with events they’ve lived, losing the ability to separate performed narratives from personal experience. They draw on familiar scripts because the scripts are easier to retrieve than actual memories. And the more emotionally charged the script, the more likely it is to be repurposed as truth.
(Mary Geddry more…)
Intercept: White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List
The Trump administration ignored questions about whether it would order the killings of those on its NSPM-7 list — even while answering our other queries.
AP: Federal judge throws out Trump order blocking development of wind energy
Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – December 14, 2025
Last Sunday, on December 7, Mydelle Wright, a well-regarded preservationist, filed a declaration before a court, saying that President Donald J. Trump is trying to get around the law to bulldoze four historic federal buildings. …
(Heather Cox Richardson more…)
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Bulwark: The FBI Spent a Generation Relearning How to Catch Spies. Then Came Kash Patel.
As China’s spies grow more aggressive, the FBI is distracted and off-balance.
… Under Director Kash Patel, the FBI has moved people and power out of the bureau’s headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington and into the heartland. He reassigned nearly a quarter of all agents to a job that’s never been part of the FBI’s purview, immigration enforcement, according to data obtained from the bureau by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat. Counterintelligence specialists with deep expertise in countries like China, Russia, and Iran are now regularly working immigration cases on a rotating basis, according to former agents who recently left the bureau. The FBI has also limited investigations of crimes like violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), allowing foreign spies greater room to maneuver.
(Bulwark more…)
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AP: What to know about the US military’s role in Syria after deadly IS attack
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The United States has had troops on the ground in Syria for over a decade, with a stated mission of fighting IS. While not part of its official mission, the U.S. presence has also been seen as a means to hinder the flow of Iranian and Iran-backed fighters and weapons into Syria from neighboring Iraq.
(AP more…)
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Robert Reich: Sunday thought: How Christmas will steal the Trump
Trump gave what was billed as a “Christmas speech” in rural Pennsylvania this past week that began with his “wishing each and every one of you a very merry Christmas, happy New Year, all of that stuff” and boasting that now, under his presidency, “everybody’s saying ‘merry Christmas’ again.”
Then he claimed — contrary to the experience of nearly everyone in the crowd — that he had gotten them “lower prices” and “bigger paychecks.” And asserted that anyone having difficulty making ends meet should just cut back on buying stuff. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils … Every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two,” he said, adding, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls.”
It’s rich — Trump preaching austerity while raking in billions from his crypto investments and bribes: a luxury jetliner from Qatar, gold bar from Apple, wealth from the Saudis, gold Rolex clock from Switzerland, and so much more.
(Robert Reich more…)
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Chronicle of Higher Education: He Went on a Hunger Strike for Palestine. Did He ‘Misuse’ the Classroom?
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Ruth Ann Crystal MD: COVID & Health News, 12/14/25
Judd Legum: As measles ravages South Carolina, RFK Jr. undermines the vaccine
Borowitz: Republicans Finally Unveil Healthcare Plan: ‘Americans Must Move to Canada’
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Thom Hartmann: Chapter 5: Powered by Plutocrats
Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: “The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink”
(Thom Hartmann more…)
GriftMatrix
Trump Action Tracker
Timeline: Tracking the Trump Justice Department’s Anti-Voting Shift
Tracking the Lawsuits Against Trump’s Agenda
Trump Pardons Database
Project 2025 Tracker
DOGE Tracker
ProPublica: Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Wired: 6 Tools for Tracking the Trump Administration’s Attacks on Civil Liberties
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